Sled Driver

I knew this was an important mission; I wanted the jet to make it. I began moving
the doors carefully, adjusting switches slowly, and talking to the airplane in a way
known only to Gypsies, witch doctors, and single-seat fighter pilots, hoping things
would improve. The airplane responded. It started to sound and feel different. All
vibrations ceased, the doors quieted and the spikes became rigid. As we reached our
last checkpoint, we were where we needed to be in speed and altitude. I said to
Walt, "Hang in there. This jet is beginning to feel right." The airplane wasn't
seriously broken, yet all of a sudden it was flying differently. As we crossed the
target area, it was smooth as silk; not one vibration, not one unstart. As soon as we
departed the hot zone, a few annunciators lit up in Walt's cockpit showing two
missiles had been fired at us. We turned north, and our speed, altitude, and turn
defeated the threat. Once we headed towards home, the airplane again began to
perform poorly. It was as if it knew. After landing, we wrote up numerous
malfunctions for maintenance. The airplane amazed me with ten minutes of smooth
flying over Libya. After flying a number of sorties in the airplane, most pilots couldn't
help thinking the airplane had a heart and spirit of its own.
MIG RUNNER
With an array of sensors in the rear seat, the RSO monitored many incoming signals
during the flight. We were always alerted to signals indicating a hostile threat, either
from a surface-to-air missile, or a fighter aircraft. Although we felt confident about
the SR-71, we never took lightly any signals indicating a threat. The other side's
threats were not a surprise to us, but they caused a face-off. They knew we were
there, and we knew they were looking at us. We knew they would activate certain
air defense systems, and they knew that it wasn't going to stop us from coming.
Most of the time, it simply was not politically expedient for the other side to attempt
to shoot us down, especially if they felt there were little chance of success. Although
this was normally the case, we carried the memory of the 1981 incident with us all
the time. In that year the North Koreans claimed violation of their airspace and fired
a surface-to-air missile at an SR-71. It missed, but the crew witnessed the
detonation of the missile from where they sat in the cockpit. We knew to expect the
unexpected.
In areas we visited frequently, we came to expect distinct reactions. If we flew
near air bases equipped with the latest Soviet MIG fighters, we expected to see the
M IGs run intercepts on us. From all I had read, I knew this was common. No matter
how good they were, they would have difficulty putting an air-to-air missile on a
target moving faster than Mach 3. Normally we could only tell electronically that an